I worked for an employer who banned "freeware" tools so you were stuck with ancient, broken software on Solaris and other systems.
Post 9-11, we had to secure all of the things, including moving away from rsh and telnet. SSH was problematic due to the freeware thing -- no worry... we were able to buy "IBM SSH" for $900 per processor value unit. (IBM SSH was an out of date OpenSSH where someone did a find and replace substituting Open with IBM)
This entire thread makes me giggle, usually posts about editors are filled with bad temper, but not this one.
Slanderous and outrageous lies!
Ed, man! !man ed
Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!
“Ed is the standard text editor.”
But more historical and factual: Ed is actually "mandatory on systems conforming to the Single Unix Specification)" as well.
exit
?
quit
?
q
?
bye
?
help
?
ohmygodgetmeouttaheeeeere
?
So, vi gets dragged in as part of your vendor's commitment to "standards compliance". Also, for SUS purposes, vi means SysV vi, not vim. A far less domesticated creature.
In a base install of Solaris, Irix, HP-UX or Tru64, it'd be the only editor you get. Vim, emacs, nano, joe etc. would all be in a seperate "freeware tools" or somesuch sideloaded optional install set.